In April 2024 I flew to Europe, in particular Ghent Belgium to visit my friend and former housemate Zane. Siraj, also my friend and former housemate joined me for the trip to see Zane and together we travelled through Europe. We visited Ghent, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Prague. Siraj was only able to make the trip through Berlin so Zane and I continued on through Prague. We stayed in hostels along the way and traveled by train for the most part to each of our destinations. It was great to be back together with both Siraj and Zane again. Below is a diary of my days throughout Europe and some pictures along the way.
Flight to Europe
April 2nd and 3rd
The trip started out with a walk down to the BART Powell station. I had my backpack on my back and was ready to go! The BART trip was of course with a little fuss. Apparently, something got onto the track when I was one stop away so we had to depart from our current train and wait for service to restart. BART operations ended up running the train on the other side of the track to continue service. All in all, it resulted in a 30-minute delay, which made me glad I left early.
I got to the airport and got checked in pretty quickly and headed over to TSA. I had TSA Pre check and was able to get through quickly. However, I was randomly selected for a phone search? First time that has ever happened and it was after I got TSA Pre check, kinda ironic. Anyway, I got through security and then went to the gate. For this trip I splurged and got the Premium Economy seats. I wasn’t totally sure what the seats would be like, but I’m sure that they would be better than base economy.
When I got to my seat, it was pretty nice; there was a blanket, a pillow, a water bottle, and some earbuds on the seat. When I sat down it was also pretty roomy. There was a lot of leg space and there was a divider between the seat next to me so that my row mate wouldn’t be spilling into my seat. In the end it didn’t even matter because no one ended up sitting in the seat next to me.
The flight was fine for the trip, I watched a movie, slept a little, watched a show, and tried to make the time go by as quickly as I could. We were served a couple meals, first, the dinner was a pasta and chicken dish and then breakfast was some yogurt, fruit, and cheese. The meals and drinks were both fairly good and warm. I also decided to have some cake that they served with the meal. I decided that on my trip I would have some sweets; for a New Year’s resolution I decided to give up sweets, but I ran into a problem when I went on this trip. I should enjoy my vacation without such strict restrictions. Therefore, I decided to have some sweets, but only that I would try a sweet once. So I won’t be having seconds of sweets.
We touched down thirty minutes early in Copenhagen, I had a scheduled 3-and-a-half layover so it only added time for me to walk around and grab some food. I felt comfortable finding my gate and getting through EU customs. Since I got a Premium Economy ticket I was also able to get into the Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) lounge. The lounge was packed! There was food, but I was still pretty full from my flight and the food there wasn’t necessarily something that interested me. I sat around in the lounge and charged my phone until I got a little more hungry and walked through the airport looking for some food. I found a restaurant that had burgers and seemed like a fine enough option while I was sitting around in an airport. Luckily the airport food there was not too expensive either. My time went by pretty quickly and I walked over to my gate. This flight was going to be much shorter to Brussels, only about an hour and a half. Since it was a short flight and a small plane there wasn’t any special seating. We were up and down quickly and I landed in Brussels!
I got my bag and went to find the train station. It was down below the airport and I wasn’t exactly sure what train I should take, but I knew that there could be a connection. So I went to the counter to try and help me figure out what train I should take. Luckily just about everyone in Belgium seems to speak English as well as Dutch and French so they were able to communicate with me pretty easily. They got me a ticket that had a connection at the Brussels South station, called Brussels Midi. I went down to the station track to wait for my train. I looked at a map of Brussels to see what stop would be my connection, but it wasn’t totally clear which station was going to be my stop. I looked it up on Google Maps and it said the same thing, Brussels South/Midi. However, the location that the station map had called it Zurd. I got on my train hoping that I knew what stop to get off at and rode for about 15 minutes. I passed the two stations that matched with what Google had and began to arrive at Brussels Zurd which was the same as Brussels Midi. It turns out that Zurd and Midi are South, just in different languages which makes sense given the number of languages spoken in Belgium. When I got off at Brussels South, I was supposed to go to Track 17 to catch my next train. I was kinda close to the departure time so I hurried over there and got on the train quickly. A conductor was walking through the train and said “terminate” and told me to get off. Apparently, the train was no longer in service and it wasn’t my train after all. I looked again at the train timetable and saw that the train I wanted was actually on track 14 now. Since the train moved stations I wasn’t able to get over there in time and had to find a new train. I walked back to the main station ticket office and got help from the attendant at the window so that I could get on the next train. Luckily, it was only about 10 minutes until the next train to Ghent left and I was able to get on with ease. I sat on the train and headed out to Ghent.
Ghent
April 3rd
Finally, I arrived at the Ghent station got off the train and there was Zane waiting! We hugged and started walking towards a bar so that we could wait for Siraj to come on his train in about an hour and a half. There wasn’t anything too special about the bar and we took a seat and ordered some beers. Zane and I caught up a little bit while drinking and time flew by until Siraj arrived and we walked back to the station. We picked up Siraj, Siraj and Zane celebrated reconnecting and then we all headed to the tram so that we could get to Zane’s apartment. Siraj got in at about 10:30 so we were getting back to Zane’s place pretty late. Still, surprisingly the tram was full of people at 11PM. Not full, but more than I would have expected for a Wednesday evening. It was about a 15-minute tram ride and then a short walk to Zane’s apartment.
We got into Zane’s apartment building and headed up to his unit. We first had to pass through the hallway that reeked of cigarette smoke, a lovely reminder that I was back in Europe where smoking was quite commonplace. His apartment was a fairly good size, plenty for one person, but it was not all that furnished. Zane isn’t at home that much since he’s in his lab all the time and traveling the world doing fieldwork. He’s also fairly limited with what he’s able to do, furnishing-wise, since he can’t fasten things to the wall. His landlord left the lights just hanging straight down from the ceiling, wires showing, and conduit just dangling. Not the best-looking design options, but Zane can’t really do much about it. He got some fabric fixtures from Ikea, but they hang too low since the conduit comes out fairly far from the ceiling. We put our stuff down in his apartment sat for a little bit and then thought about some food. Unfortunately, food places and just about every store in Ghent close at 8 so we weren’t left with many options. Ironically, we really only had McDonalds to choose from. So, we set off to the main square to find McDonalds. The square was not very packed late at night, but of the people congregating it was mainly young people around the McDonalds, since it was the only thing open. We ordered our food and waited. They mixed up our orders, gave Zane my cheeseburger with bacon, Zane’s vegetarian, and gave me Zane’s veggie burger. We switched them back and headed to the canal to eat and enjoy the ambiance. We were joined by a local duck who was keen to get some fries from my McDonalds order. He kept trying to get at my bag and was quite persistent. After a handful of attempts he gave up and we had just about finished anyway so we got up and headed back to Zane’s apartment.
We were definitely tired, but for some reason we decided to stay up talking and watch an episode of a show called The Curse. It was a common pastime of ours to watch television and movies together when we lived together in Rohnert Park so it felt natural and comforting to be back together again. We finished the episode and since it was about 2AM we decided to finally get to sleep. I took a shower and plopped down on the couch which would serve as my bed for the next couple of nights. It fit me perfectly and I fell asleep quickly. I had some earplugs and a sleeping mask so it was easy to fall asleep and stay asleep undisturbed.
April 4th
I woke up pretty late since we were up until about 2AM. Zane had just gotten back from the gym and we all got ready for the day. We were hungry so we decided that it would be best to get a Belgian waffle, start the day off right. However, it was a more specific type of waffle, a Liege waffle, from Liege on the other side of the country. We stopped at a place called The Waffle Factory which as we continued to walk around we saw a bunch of Waffle Factory shops all over the place. Siraj also looked up the place on Google Maps a day later and saw that the reviews were really bad, about 1.5 stars. The reviews said it was a tourist trap and that the service was poor. It wasn’t a huge deal to us since we only got one to try and our orders were pretty basic without toppings. The waffle was definitely good and different from a typical Belgian waffle that you could expect in the US. It was pretty doughy and sweeter. There was caramelized sugar on the edges of the waffle and a gooey dense center. It wasn’t all that large, but enough for us to get a good taste.
After that, we walked more around the Ghent city center to see what the town was like, although it wasn’t really a town, more of a city. I think Zane said it was about 100k people. We also stopped in at an H&M store to get me some sunglasses and Siraj a beanie since it was very windy and somewhat cold. It was interesting that there were so many name-brand stores lining the streets of Ghent intermixed with more local food shops. There were of course some shops that I didn’t recognize, but in the city center it was clearly more tourist-focused and had the same name brands that people would recognize in the US. When we were walking about it was 10AM so it wasn’t very packed which was nice to explore. We walked over to a monument/structure called The Barn which was in front of the Saint Bathes Cathedral. We also were getting hungry for some actual breakfast since the waffle wasn’t a full meal. We stopped at a restaurant called Caffè Rosario. I got an omelette and Zane and Siraj got some sandwiches on focaccia bread. It was pretty good, expected food for breakfast-type meals. We spent a good amount of time there enjoying the ambiance of a Belgian cafe before we decided to head out and go to the Saint Baths Cathedral where the Mystical Lamb painting is displayed.
The cathedral was large for sure, not as large as some of the Cathedrals I saw in Italy, but Ghent is a smaller town compared to some of the places I visited in Italy so it’s not too surprising. We spent a little time looking around the interior of the Cathedral and the altar, but we made our way over to the entrance to the Mystic Lamb. The access was about 13 Euro per person and we were able to walk through the historical part of the cathedral as well. There were more paintings than just the Mystic Lamb, but nothing that we saw to be of significant importance in comparison. The Mystic Lamb painting was quite beautiful though. The Lamb was a representation of Jesus Christ and there were many other religious figures such as God, Mary, and John the Baptist. The images had depth and vibrant colors lined with gold frames. It was something worth seeing and I was glad we went in there, especially since it was relatively inexpensive and didn’t take very long to get through the whole exhibit. It was fun to spend time with Zane and Siraj again too, it was the first time we had all been together in over a year and it was us back to our normal selves. It was as if we had only been away from each other for a week. We enjoyed the exhibit, but we also enjoyed each other’s company, making jokes, catching up, and learning. There was still quite a bit of day left but we were tired from staying up late so we decided to get some Cuberdon’s and then head back to Zane’s apartment.
Cuberdon’s which were a jelly-type candy. They were shaped in cones with a harder shell encasing, but still soft, just not a full sticky and liquid jelly. The sticky liquid jelly was the interior part of the Cuberdon. It was definitely sweet and delicious, a little too much if you had a lot. We got all the flavors they offered which was an Elderberry type flavor, Zane describes it as NyQuil flavor, but it wasn’t really as tart as that, more sweet. We also got Cherry, Green Apple, and Lemon. My favorite was the Green Apple flavor, but I also liked the Lemon. The Elderberry is apparently the original flavor and it was good, just not my favorite. The Elderberry and the Cherry back to back made a disgusting flavor combination that I would not recommend! After that, we went back to Zane’s apartment and relaxed before we were going to head out to dinner with some of Zane’s colleagues. I think we watched another episode of The Curse while we vegged.
After about an hour or so we were ready to head out to the dumpling place to meet some of Zane’s colleagues/friends. The dumpling place was called Rabot Dumpling House in the Rabot district of Ghent, about a 10/15 minute walk from Zane’s apartment. There were a group of people from his lab that were joining us, their names were Tom, Inès (Inesh), Louise (Louisa), and Karun. Tom is from Belgium and grew up near Antwerp, Louise is also from Belgium and grew up in West Flanders, Inès is from Lisbon, Portugal, and Karun is from Bangalore, India. There were some other friends from Zane’s lab who weren’t able to join us unfortunately, but it was a good-sized group for us to meet. I think it could have been hard to follow if there were more people. Also, luckily, they all spoke English very well and we were able to communicate easily. We had a good time meeting them and getting to know them more. Tom and I sat across from each other and talked a good amount about San Francisco when he visited once. We also talked with the group about Belgium more and the differences between the Flanders areas. We talked a little about the economic situation of Belgium and how they make money from the college, the taxes in Belgium, and the living situations. All while that was happening we were enjoying the delicious dumplings. We got a mixed plate of Vegetarian, Vegan, Shrimp, Chicken, and Beef. I preferred the Beef and Chicken versions. We spent about two hours at the restaurant talking with them and understanding their lives in more detail as well as them understanding ours. Then we thought to go to a bar called “Hot Club Ghent” which was back in the tourist city center. Zane wasn’t sure if we’d be able to get into the bar because it was kinda small and it’s usually packed, but we decided to head over and see what we could find.
When we got to Hot Club it was sure packed, so we backed out of there pretty quickly, but it would have been a really cool spot. It was down a narrow alleyway tucked behind other buildings, kind of like a speakeasy. There was a live band that night so that didn’t help our chances of finding a seat. Since we couldn’t get in we decided to head back out and find another bar that we could get some drinks at and continue the conversation. We walked a little further down the street and saw a place called Her Waterhuis, which seemed to be the equivalent of a typical pub. We continued our conversation talking more about media and making jokes about all our countries. We also joked about Zane since we all know him and from different settings. We stayed at the bar for a few hours and then called it a night when my toes were starting to freeze and they were starting to close up the shop.
We walked back home and hung out a little. We also decided to play a game where we would each try to list out 100 famous women and see how long it would take. The premise is that it would be harder to name women than it would be to name men. We thought it would be a good challenge and we wanted to see who we’d come up with and what order we think of certain women. We also thought it would be interesting to name 100 hundred famous men and see how long it takes in comparison. Siraj finished his list first at about 30 minutes, I got mine second at about 50 minutes and Zane got 50 women at the hour mark. Siraj and I watch a lot more media and ours was definitely actress-heavy, I had some political influence and Zane had more of a music industry influence. It was fun, but it took us a pretty long time to get through it all so when we were done it was about 2AM again. We decided to head off to bed and called it a night.
April 5th
I woke up again around 10AM, Zane was just getting back from the gym again and Siraj and I were waking up. We all got dressed and ready for the day and headed out to a breakfast place called Cafè Labath for some coffee and pastries. I got a hot chocolate and a croissant. It was good, but nothing special in comparison to the coffee houses in the US. Of course, I didn’t get coffee so it’s not a great comparison. We didn’t spend too much time there and then went over to the Ghent castle.
It was about 8 Euro per person to get in which wasn’t bad. We could also get the audio tour, but we didn’t really want to be walking around tied to an audio tour and preferred to freely wander through the castle. Unfortunately, there weren’t any description placards to give us more information about the castle so we didn’t learn necessarily all that much. It was still interesting to see some of the weapons, armor, design, and views from the castle as we walked through. The castle seemed to have a large section on torture and the dungeon in the later half of the tour. There was a display with a multitude of torture devices used while the castle was active. We spent about an hour and a half there and it was a little past noon at that point. We were feeling a little hungry.
Zane frequented a pizza place back at the main tourist square called Giuseppe’s so we walked over there for lunch. It wasn’t full and we were able to get in for a seat right away. There was a group of Brazilian or Portuguese people sitting behind us who were quite loud and making it hard for me to hear Siraj and Zane. Not horrible, just a little annoying. We also noticed while sitting there that Ghent seemed to always play 2010’s alternative indie rock songs in their restaurants. They kept playing songs we all knew from when we were in high school. It was fine because we liked that music, but weird that they were playing that music in general. We got our pizzas pretty quickly after waiting. I got a five cheese pizza that had some delicious mozzarella cheese, among others, but the mozzarella was by far the best part of the pizza. The crust was also really good, pretty doughy, but still fluffy. It seemed that when you bit together the fluffy dough crust it condensed into a doughy dense breadstick. Some of the better pizza crust I’ve had. After we finished there we wanted to find some Belgian chocolate. We figured that we had to try some Belgian chocolate while we were in Belgium! So, we walked around the main square area a little more until we found a shop that just said Chocolates, we thought that was as good as any.
We headed inside the chocolate shop and found a narrow hallway lined with chocolates on one side and coffee on the other, a barista bar. There were tons of options of chocolates, too hard to choose! Siraj got a box of a random pre-selected assortment and I decided to select my own. I got a fourteen-piece box, but in the end got 16 since I got a few small ones. There were some chocolates that had alcohol and some that didn’t, I got a mix of both but stuck more to the chocolates that didn’t have alcohol. I didn’t seem to notice any difference between the ones with alcohol and the ones without. It was all so delicious and honestly so rich. I had to have a break before trying them all because there was so much sugar and chocolate.
After we got some chocolate we decided to go for a boat tour on the Ghent canal. There were plenty of options and the day had cleared up nicely. The boat tour was 10 Euro per person for a 45-minute tour which seemed pretty standard. We got to ride down the canal through some historical monuments and the tour guide would talk about them, but it was somewhat hard to hear because I was sitting right next to the engine. There was a former meat market that we passed and a former fish market that was converted into a tourist information center. An interesting factoid the tour guide told us about was the urine tester in the Middle Ages. Supposedly, urine was collected for its ammonia to be later used in gunpowder and there were people who diluted the urine so someone had to test the urine, literally taste it! The day was very nice on the water so it was great being able to enjoy the boat tour. There were all sorts of boat tours zipping along the waterway, some boat drivers going faster than others, but it was interesting to see them navigate around each other.
After the boat ride, we headed back to Zane’s apartment for a quick rest and then we decided to find some Belgian food for dinner. We ended up at a restaurant called Du Progres. It ended up being a lovely night and we sat on the patio under a cover with plenty of other people at the restaurant too; enjoying the nice night in Ghent. Unfortunately, there were also a lot of people sitting on the patio that were smoking. We seemed to be surrounded by smokers, it was inescapable. There was a door behind us that appeared to be the door that workers typically used to take their smoke breaks at. There was one worker in particular who came out of the door and was complaining about something, sounded like a manager treating him poorly so he was venting with his co-workers. It didn’t help to create a wonderful atmosphere with them complaining right behind us and their smoke wafting into our table area. Luckily the food was quite good! I ended up getting Vol-Au-Vent which was a chicken dish in some sort of cream sauce, I forgot to take a picture before I started eating, so the picture’s halfway through. Zane tells me that typically the dish is supposed to be served in some bread bowl or with a lot of bread to soak up the sauce, but I only got one small triangle of bread. Siraj got Flemish stew and Zane got a veggie burger. For dessert, I got a brownie with ice cream and Siraj got profiteroles. All in all the food was delicious, but the service and atmosphere detracted from the dinner’s enjoyment a bit.
We got back to Zane’s apartment around 11 and decided that we didn’t want to go to bed just yet so we watched the movie Elvis together. The movie was garbage, it was a rushed film as if it was really just one long trailer. Tom Hanks had a hilarious accent that made no sense and Elvis felt like he was a supporting character. It was very weird, but it was a lot of fun to trash the movie and make fun of it together while we were watching it.
After the movie, I took a quick shower, got ready for bed, and fell asleep quickly.
April 6th
We got up and packed. Siraj and I headed over to Cafe Labath for a quick bite to eat, Zane was at the gym. Then we headed out to the tram to head to the train station since we needed to get to the train station in Brussels for a 12:44 train. When we got to the train station we found out that the trams were striking for the day. We scrambled to find a way to the train station quickly and I ended up flagging down a taxi so we could head over. We got on the train to Brussels with minutes to spare!
We got on the train in Brussels and headed to Amsterdam.
Amsterdam
April 7th
We got to Amsterdam and it was absolutely packed. I have never seen so many people before, more people than I saw in any city in Italy. We walked to our hostel and all along the pathways it was mobbed by masses of people. There were also a lot of trams, seems like a tram passed by every minute. The trams were also moving really quickly past people, and the crowds had to stay really alert because the tracks were directly next to the sidewalks/pathways. There were a lot of bikes too, but I couldn’t see as many of the bikes because there were just so many people.
We got to our hostel and headed up to our room. We found out from the desk that no one had been assigned to our room for the night so far. The room was decent when we walked in, there was a little bit of a smell, but it seemed to be in fine shape. There was a bathroom in the suite which was nice to have. We put our bags in the pull-out lockers and then headed out again to find some food. Siraj found a place on Google Maps called Lombardo’s which had pretty good reviews and was close by. We got to Lombardo’s and it was a tiny little hole in the wall. Only bar seating and maybe 12 seats maximum. We squeezed into the building and to the front counter to place our order. It was all burgers so I got a truffle burger with pancetta. Siraj got Silence of the Lamb, and Zane got a beetroot veggie burger. We found some seats at the front of the restaurant that gave us a good angle for people-watching. We got our food pretty quickly and the burgers were huge. The truffle mayo sauce was delicious, and rich but not too overpowering. The pancetta was essentially bacon and it was somewhat crispy in parts, but I probably would have preferred it a little crispier. The burgers were attracting some attention from the people walking by as we were eating and a few people stopped in after seeing the burgers. Since they were so huge it was kind of hard to eat all of that burger, but it was incredibly good so I didn’t want any of it to go to waste. Once we all finished up we walked around Amsterdam a little more so that could digest our food and see the city some more.
We were pretty tired from not sleeping that much during the prior nights and we weren’t planning on doing too much that night so we decided that we would see Dune Part 2 at a cinema in Amsterdam. After we walked around some more we headed back to our room to relax and buy tickets for the movie. Zane hadn’t seen it yet and Siraj and I wanted to see it a second time. We were also curious about the movie-going experience in Amsterdam compared to the United States. We walked to the theater which wasn’t very far and we passed by bars and restaurants that were packed with people. We were glad that we weren’t in the madhouse of people. The cinema was called Pathè City, Pathè seemed to be some chain in Amsterdam as I had seen other Pathè locations. The cinema was nice, our theater was on the fourth floor, but technically the 5th since the ground floor is considered floor zero in Amsterdam. The seats were really nice and there were little side tables with lights. It was more similar to an Alamo Drafthouse, but it didn’t have waiters serving food during the film. The movie was great and the experience was nice. We had Dutch subtitles which was interesting to read along a little bit. It was a fun experience and after the movie ended it was about midnight so we wandered back to our hostel for bed.
When we got back to our hostel we noticed a smell in our room, it seemed to be some sewer smell. Not horrible, but definitely not pleasant. We opened some windows to try and air it out. I also decided to take a shower and discovered that the shower was a pain in the ass. It was on a timer and the shower head didn’t move so there was no way to control the water. There wasn’t a lip at the shower perimeter so all the water flowed out of the shower area and accumulated near the sink. I had to push the water with my feet back towards the drain to try and keep it contained. I also had to keep pushing the button to keep the water on and it seemed like every time I pushed the button there was a burst of cool water before it started to heat up again. After I finished cleaning up I dried the floor with my towel that was provided by the hostel since I had my own quick dry towel for the morning. A real nuisance to deal with.
I got into bed, put my earplugs in, my eye mask on, and tried to fall asleep. The bed creaked a lot since I was on the top bunk so I tried to minimize my movement so that I didn’t disturb Siraj below me too much. We had the windows open since it was warm and we wanted to air out the smell, but it was very noisy outside from the Saturday night partiers. I could hear them through my earplugs and eventually, I closed the window nearest me to try and minimize the sound. Overall, it was not a good night’s sleep.
April 7th
We woke up around 10AM since none of us got a decent night’s sleep from the partying going on during the night. We had a slow start before heading out for breakfast. There was a place nearby that had good reviews called Eggs Benaddicted. When we got there it was going to be about a 15-minute wait for a table. Unfortunately, it ended up being more of a 30/45 minute wait so we didn’t get seated until about noon. We were pretty hungry by that point. The place was pretty narrow but went far back and they packed in as many tables as they could. They were rotating customers in and out quickly to get people waiting seated. We were seated close to the cashier and there was always a line behind us of people trying to finish up paying and close out their tabs. We finally got to order and I ended up getting the French toast, Siraj and Zane both got the Shakshuka. I also got a plate of pancakes for us to split amongst each other. The French toast was very good, with thick slices of bread and a fairly eggy flavor. There was a cream cheese spread and strawberry jam to accompany the French toast. There just wasn’t that much of the toast so I was glad to have the pancakes to enjoy. I had about half of the pancakes and Siraj and Zane had the second half. The pancakes were also somewhat eggy which is not what I was used to for pancakes. Not something that I would have ordered again. I would have stuck to the French toast. Once we finished up I paid and we headed out. We thought that we would head over to the forest near the outskirts of Amsterdam called Het Amsterdam Bos.
We went back to the hostel to grab our bags and then we walked to the tram station. It would be about a 15-minute tram ride to get to the forest. We still had a bit of a walk from the tram to the forest. It was interesting to see the transportation as we were walking around; there was a main road that we were walking along but there was still only a single lane for cars in either direction. Then there were dedicated bike paths and pedestrian paths, and intermixed within the whole system was greenspace. It was very different than how the US would dedicate that road, I would assume that in the US there would be a small strip for a bike lane, a small strip for a sidewalk, and then give the road 2 or 3 lanes for car traffic in either direction. The other aspect I noticed was that families with kids of all ages used the bikeways. Some bikes had front seating, essentially a wheelbarrow in front, where kids, pets, groceries, or the like could fit. There were also young kids riding their bikes on the transportation thoroughfares because they were protected from the cars. There was hardly any risk for young kids or any biker for that matter to ride on the bike pathway. It was different in the main city center of Amsterdam because the city had cars, motorcycles, pedestrians, trams, and more bikes racing around all on shared roads/pathways. But out in the semi-suburb of Amsterdam, it was safe and separated.
After walking for some time we reached the forest. Although once we reached it I realized that it would hardly be a forest in comparison to the US. It was more similar to the parks in San Francisco. This one was fairly large so it reminded me of Golden Gate Park. At the entrance, there was a market packed with people with books, clothing, food, coffee, home goods, and all sorts of items to buy. It turned out to be such a nice day in the sun so it was really busy. We wandered through it a little and browsed, but didn’t end up buying anything. We kept moving on through the forest. We found a place to sit for a minute and enjoy the weather. Just behind us, there was a rope course with zip lining that kids could enjoy, and it seemed like some parents were enjoying it too. Where we were at the entrance it was very similar to Golden Gate Park, not as busy as GGP, but it was manicured with pathways and pedestrian accommodations intermixed along the walkways. We continued walking along and found a nice large field of grass that we could lay in to absorb the sun since it had been overcast and rainy for a bit of our time in Ghent.
After we laid in the grass for a while we continued to walk through the park. We meandered our way through the park to a middle point near a restaurant to find some food and use a restroom. Unfortunately, the restaurant was closing so we couldn’t get in there. We continued to walk through the park and headed toward the end of the main column of water that we saw on the map. As we walked I felt more disjointed regards to being in this park. The park felt so much like Golden Gate Park because it was a lovely day, there was so much greenery, a mass of people were enjoying the space, and animals were everywhere, but it was filled with all these odd differences. We would walk past people that appear the same as any other person in the United States except when we pass they don’t speak our language. Or the signage that is in the same spot you would expect a sign to be in the US, but it’s in a different language. There are cars, fewer cars, but still cars traversing through the roads, but they are smaller and different in their design. This park had all the same components but these minor differences made it surreal to be walking around. It made me realize how little we differ from people in different parts of the globe, but at the same part, it is our differences that make us unique. Sure Europe is pretty close to what the United States is like compared to other continents like Asia, but it was still such a bizarre feeling to experience.
We walked to find the main bar of water and discovered that it was a rowing pool. Rowers were gliding on the water, on the perfect still sunny day. We walked along the waterside and I also found the pool to be a bizarre experience. The water was a perfect rectangle, but huge, and grass and nature went right up next to the water. I couldn’t remember a large body of water so clearly man-made that had nature adjoining the water line. It felt incredibly artificial and it made me think of the large body of water by the Washington Monument, but all of that is surrounded by stone.
We walked a little further away from the rowers and found another marsh of sorts with a bench where we could sit and rest. The sun was still high in the sky and the marsh was perfectly lit to create this vibrant green. We saw a bird walking through the marsh and thought of it as a perfect moment in time to enjoy in Europe. Seemed like it was a park where a king might hunt for game.
Eventually, we made our way to the end of the rowing pool and basically the entrance of the park. We sat and looked out over the pool as the sun began to set and took in the view. There was a restaurant behind us so we sat down and ordered some food. The restaurant was called De Bosbaan. I ended up getting some fried chicken and tried some bitterballen. The chicken was good and the bitterballen was alright. Bitterballen had a very creamy texture which I wasn’t expecting and not something I was necessarily fond of. So I let Siraj enjoy the rest of that. I also got a Pomegranate, gin-based drink which was quite good and basically tasted like liquid candy. The sun was going down and the wind was picking up so we didn’t stay long at the restaurant and began to walk back to the tram so we could get to our hostel. On our way back we encountered a local kid who seemed to “prank” us? He ran up behind us and yelled “C” or “See”, it wasn’t very clear. He didn’t do anything else and we continued to walk on. He walked behind us for a block or two and we saw a friend of his on a bike ride in front of us and turn down a street. Once we passed the street the kid ran away to join his friend, not engaging with us any further. We weren’t sure exactly what that was about but assumed it was related to some sort of TikTok prank.
After a tram ride back we stayed in our hostel for a little bit and rested. We had already had dinner so we thought we might want to get some dessert and we thought that we should take a stroll down to the red light district. Along the way, we got some ice cream that was nothing special and continued down to the red light district. The streets were fairly empty while we were walking there, it was about 9PM so people were back home for the most part and it was during the week so the tourism crowds were down. As we got closer to the red light district there were definitely more people around and once we actually got to the district it was packed with people. There were two main roads with red-lit windows along the facades, and a canal separated the two roads. As we got there Zane got offered cocaine twice which we declined, surprising to have that be so front and center. It was discreet, but still indiscriminate. There were sex shops, porno showrooms, and of course, the women in lingerie attempting to attract patrons. For the most part, the prostitutes had Instagram model makeup on and seemed more like mannequins than actual people. There were quite a few windows empty which we thought could be due to us being there at only 10PM and on a weekday. We didn’t see many people actually engaging with the women or walking into the rooms for sex, but a few times we did see someone talking with them. We walked down one alley that was packed with people and windows full of prostitutes and a tourist happened to take a picture of a woman or of the surrounding area, it was hard to tell, but pictures were illegal. The prostitute banged on the glass hard and pointed to the fine sign, clearly very mad with the tourist. The tourist apologized and continued to walk away as the crowd moved them along. We had seen all that we needed to see so we decided to walk our way back to the hostel. It seemed that some more people were coming out by then so the nightlife had picked up a little bit more, but it still was not any comparison to the first night.
We got ready for bed and finally went to sleep at a more reasonable time for once, midnight.
April 8th
We woke up at a reasonable time this morning and we’re ready to get the day started. Zane was going to get a quick workout in at a gym chain he was a member of and Siraj and I were going to do some laundry. We headed down to the restaurant that was in the hostel we were staying at since we paid for the free breakfast option. When we got there we discovered that it was a really basic breakfast and was honestly not worth the money. This hostel continued to be a poor experience. There was toast, cereal, juice, some basic fruit, some cold cuts, and cheese. All buffet style, really very basic, and not filling. We felt that it was enough to get the day started so Siraj and I went to do some laundry and Zane went to the gym.
The laundry place was called Powders Launderette and it had some helpful staff to get us started on the self-service option. We put our clothes in the washer, got some detergent, and started it. It cost about €7.50 for each load which was somewhat pricey and it was going to run for about 35 minutes. We let it run and headed out to a coffee spot to get a little more food. We went to a spot between the laundry and our hostel called Bocca Coffee. Sirja and I both got some chocolate filled croissants and Siraj got a coffee. It was enough to hold us over and the coffee house was more reminiscent of the coffee shops in the US which made us a little homesick. It didn’t kill too much time so we ended up going back to the laundry to wait for our wash cycles to finish. We waited there until our wash and dry cycles finished and then headed back to the hostel to meet up with Zane.
We wanted to go and see the tulip market to start the day so we packed up our day bags and headed over the the central part of Amsterdam. The tulip market was not necessarily live tulips, it was mostly bulbs and seed packets. There were some live flowers, but of the live ones, they were not typically tulips. There was one shop in particular that seemed to have the most patrons and the best-looking display of flowers.
I stopped to get a stroopwaffle as well and then we headed out, to the next location. We wanted to head over to the Jordaan district of the city as we had heard it was the typical architecture of Amsterdam and beautiful canals. I stopped in at a chocolate shop called Puccini Bomboni and got some delicious chocolate. I got some chocolate-covered shortbread cookies and some milk chocolate wafers with chocolate sprinkles, they were both rich and creamy, and very delicious. It was not that packed and the area seemed to be slow in general, a more relaxed lifestyle. We wandered around, saw some canals, people-watched, and peeked down alleys. There was one alley in particular that was pretty, lined with greenery and in one section the was a park and a free library/book exchange.
After we wandered for an hour or so we were getting hungry and we found a pizza place that was at an intersection that seemed nice; so, took a seat outside. It was a small little corner, but seemed plenty busy with locals moving around. All roads were one lane, but allowed for both directions. There were dog walkers, bikes, and tourists moving past us, it was a quaint little area. The pizza place was called La Perla Pizzeria and it was a split shop. One side of the street seemed to have the pizza ovens and a takeout area, then on the other side of the street was the sit-down restaurant. The pizza was good, Siraj got a Margherita and I got a 4 cheese. It was good, but nothing too incredible, just good. The main part that made the experience memorable was the ambiance, it was very calming and mellow as we sat on a nice sunny day in Amsterdam. After we ate our lunch we thought we might as well get some dessert so we walked down a little further and found an ice cream place called Monte Pelmo. I got a cookies and creme and vanilla; the cookies and creme was fine, but the vanilla was very good, smooth and creamy. It reminded me of the vanilla that I would get from Clover Stornetta in the little cups at the Petaluma fair.
We continued to walk around the Jordaan district, but we wanted to make our way over to the Maritime Museum next so we looked for a tram or bus stop to get us over there. It was a bus ride with one connection, but it was all quite easy since I had a 24-hour pass for all of the public transit offerings from the city. While we were riding in the bus there was a Chinook helicopter that was flying around and seemed to land not that far from the Maritime Museum actually. After our bus ride, we walked over to the museum and sat in the park a little before going in, it was a very nice day in Amsterdam and we wanted to take advantage of as much green space as we could. Eventually, we entered the museum and walked through the exhibits. There was one for a former Dutch colony island sending some young persons to the Netherlands for education, one for the volunteer ocean rescue organization of The Netherlands, one for shipping around the world and how it impacts nature, the environment, and the Netherlands, one exhibit was about the historical naval history of the Netherlands, and lastly there was a replica maritime merchant ship that we could tour. The most interesting exhibit was about the commercial trade around the world. The exhibit talked about the impact on animals, the impact on the environment, and how the main trading countries interacted with The Netherlands. It was focused on Europe, The United States, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and China. It was interesting to understand how we eat globally impacts nature, and reminded me of the movie Food Inc. It would be hard for me to change my diet because I am a somewhat selective eater, but it did inspire me to make changes. The exhibit about the naval history of The Netherlands was interesting as well, it wasn’t as large as the commercial trade one, but it was interesting to see the history and the artistic imagery they had on display. I also didn’t know that the Netherlands and England were so intertwined with their naval history. The volunteer ocean rescue exhibit was interesting, it had pictures and interviews with the volunteers as well as pictures from all the ocean rescue stations along the coastline. It was some really beautiful pictures of the coastline and it made me bummed that I didn’t include an excursion to the Atlantic Ocean for this trip. We made our way over to the replica ship, but it was getting pretty close to closing time so we didn’t get to spend much time on the ship, we walked around for maybe 20/30 minutes.
After the museum, we went back to the park and sat around for a while enjoying the weather and each other’s company. We didn’t stay for too long because we wanted to get back to our hostel and plan for dinner. So we took the tram back and put our stuff down in the hostel while we looked up places to go to. We decided on this vegan restaurant called Sunny Burger Co which was maybe 5 minutes away. It was more fast food than any of the other places we ate at, but we sat inside and ate in the restaurant. I got some chicken nuggets, except they weren’t chicken of course, and some onion rings. They were pretty good and didn’t necessarily taste like chicken, but the texture and consistency were pretty similar. The onion rings were good too, not heavily breaded like typical onion rings, but they were good and crispy. After we ate we walked around to get some dessert, but ultimately decided that we wanted to sit at a restaurant and do some people-watching for our last night in Amsterdam. We ended up sitting at a restaurant called Hoopman which was on a main square type part of Amsterdam. There was a lot of outdoor seating and we were able to find a table quickly. We got some dessert which was fine, seemed like it was some basic tourist trap food, and beers that were fine as well. We people-watched and chatted for a couple of hours before we walked back to our hostel.
When we got back to our hostel I showered and the got into bed, as I was just getting into bed we heard some thunder. Then we kept seeing lightning and hearing thunder. The storm was getting closer to us and it was fun to watch the free fireworks show as we were drifting off to sleep. Our train out of Amsterdam was at 9:45 so we needed to be up somewhat early.
April 9th
We woke up and got some breakfast downstairs at the basic plain hostel breakfast buffet. Then we headed to the train station. The tram ride was about 15 minutes and we arrived with time to spare. We discovered that we arrived with plenty of time since the train was delayed by about 35 minutes. It made me a little concerned about our connecting train since we only had 30 minutes between our arrival in Hanover and our departure to Berlin. We got on our train and headed out to Hanover. I slept some, watched some stuff on my phone, wrote this blog, and watched the countryside pass by. We arrived in Hanover and sure enough, it didn’t matter because our connecting train was delayed by an hour and a half. We waited a while and we tried to figure out what platform our train would be on and what time it was going to arrive. We watched as a lot of panicked travelers tried to figure out what was going on with their train as well. It seemed that there were a lot of train delays and Zane also said that the German train system had deteriorated quite a bit after COVID and that there were always delays. Eventually, we got on our train and we were on our way to Berlin!
Berlin
April 9th
We arrived at the Berlin central train station and wandered around trying to figure out how we would be able to use the tram to get to our hostel. Our hostel was called Circus Hostel and was about a 15-minute tram ride, but we needed tickets somehow. We got a ticket and got onto the tram, but it was weird, there didn’t seem to be any validation system on the tram. We found that there was a ticket stamp machine, but no one else was validating on the tram when they got on. I figured they had some app that they utilized instead of a paper ticket like we had. Our tram took us to our station and we got out into a large, busy 5-way intersection with trams, cars, busses, bicycles, pedestrians, and a subway underneath. There were shops, hotels, our hostel, restaurants, bars, all sorts of places for people to come and go.
We got into our hostel and it was already nicer than the last one. There were lots of travelers scattered around the grounds and a friendly front desk staff. There was a lounge, outdoor seating, a cafe, a bar downstairs, and all sorts of offers posted in the main lobby to explore the city by guided tour or with a group. We took the elevator up to our floor and got into our room. It was a much larger room with two bunk bed sets, lockers, and a table and chairs. The beds had enough space and a little cubby for us to put our electronics and other items in while we slept. It was really nice. We didn’t have an on-suite bathroom, but the bathroom and showers were not far down the hall.
We were hungry since we got to our hostel around 7 and missed lunch since we were on the train the whole time. We looked for some restaurants and found a lot of options around us. We settled on an Italian restaurant called La Cantina which was basically on the intersection. We walked in and were seated quickly. Zane and I got some beers since we figured we needed to have some German beer since we were in Germany after all. They were fine, but I’m not much of a beer drinker so I can’t give it a fair assessment. I ordered some spaghetti carbonara, Zane got a vegetarian pizza, and Siraj got a steak. The carbonara was good, but didn’t seem that high of quality compared to some of the other meals we had gotten previously. I figured it was more of a tourist-focused meal since we were in a major tourist destination. We stayed there for an hour or so and then we decided to go and get some dessert and walk around the area a little more.
There were people walking around on every block and we weaved our way through the masses. We crossed over to the same block as our hostel and walked down a row of restaurants and bars to find a donut place called Doughnut Time. It had a lot of unique donuts with special toppings. I ended up getting a cookie dough donut which had uncooked cookie dough on the top of the donut with icing and Zane and I shared a cookies and creme donut. They were both great, very sweet and sugary, but good. More than I needed after being full from dinner.
We didn’t want to go to bed yet so we went down to the bar in our hostel to see what they had available. It wasn’t very full down there so we got some beers and sat at one of the tables. The beers were okay, not that great and Zane didn’t like the homebrewed beer they had available so I ended up finishing his too. We also decided to play the game celebrities, which we hadn’t played for a while together. We spent a couple hours down there and then we were tired so we headed back to our room to get ready for bed.
April 10th
We slept in a little to try and catch up on some sleep. We were surprised that our 4th bunkmate didn’t arrive during the night but figured that they would show up sometime during the day. We got ready, planned for the day, and headed out for breakfast. Siraj found a place called Cafè Fleury which was on the same block as our hostel, not very far from the donut place from the night prior. It was quaint and tight seating. We got a table in the back and took a look at the menu so that we could place our order at the counter. I ended up getting an omelette with toast and bacon crumbles on the top and hot chocolate to go with it. It was delicious, the egg omelet came in a square of sorts, it was fluffy, dense, and moist. The bacon and chives on the top helped to pair with the flavor very well. I could taste just a little butter on the omelet and the corners added a nice crispy part as well. It was very filling and hard to get all the way through it, but I didn’t want to waste such good food so I powered through. The hot chocolate was okay, it was a little too chocolatey for my likes. In the restaurant we were surrounded by images from old European films, I wasn’t sure if they were all French, but I recognized a frame from the Francois Truffaut film Day For Night. Once we finished eating we headed out for some sightseeing. It was Siraj’s last day to tour with us so we wanted to make the most of it.
We wanted to get to the Brandenburg Gate so we had to get on the metro which was at the same intersection. It was hard at first to try and figure out which train on either side of the platform we needed to get on. Initially, we got on a train going the wrong direction, but luckily the trains in Berlin were very frequent so we got off at the next stop and waited for a train going the other direction, we only had to wait about 5 minutes. We got on the train going in the right direction and we were off. I had gotten the Berlin public transit app by that point so we didn’t have to tap on or tap off while we were riding it was just for if an officer checked. We had a connection and it was much easier to find our correct platform at that point. I must have missed the signage that indicated the side of the platform which went in a specific direction because it was clear for our transfer. We got to our final stop and walked out directly in front of the Brandenburg gate, a large spectacle. We took a picture in front of it and moved along, not much else to do without a tour.
Our next destination was the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. It was a brief 5/10 minute walk from the Brandenburg Gate. We walked there and saw quite a few embassies including the US embassy, which had a number of guards patrolling the exterior of the building. We got to the memorial and there were a pretty sizeable number of people touring, walking through the memorial. It was a large space with stones of varying sizes. They were all the same width and depth, but their height was different and irregular. The memorial overall had the stones rising at the center point to form some sort of a mountain top, but it was still not uniform so it wasn’t necessarily clear what the intention was. People are able to walk amidst the stones so we walked through, the ground continued to decline as we walked further in, slowly we would get engulfed by the stones and they would become quite tall. The stones getting taller and the ground going deeper gave a real sense of how large the memorial is. Some people walking between the stones were not honoring the memorial as well as they probably should have, taking quaint pictures in between the stones and running around, laughing, joking. It reminded me of that story of the woman who was posing with a handbag in front of the Auschwitz concentration camp, in poor taste. We came out the other side of the memorial and found an information center. There was a queue formed outside the entrance which seemed like it would take about an hour to get in. We didn’t even have tickets so we weren’t sure if we would be able to get in at all. We walked to a corner point of the memorial and I thought that it made me think of the scale of the Holocaust, the stones symbolizing the piles of bodies of murdered Jews creating an irregular mountain of bodies, walking through giving us the perspective and completely engulfing our ability to see the outside world. It was a moving memorial, one that I would have to read more about on Wikipedia.
We continued to walk on and went to the Reichstag, which was the main governmental building for Berlin and Germany in its entirety. It was huge and we saw that there was a glass dome at the top that had people walking in. There was a blocked-off section in the back which must have been for official use of the building whereas the front had more of a tourist section for ticketing, security, and photos. We didn’t have tickets so we went to see if we could get some for the day, but unfortunately they were sold out for the day. We decided that we would get a coffee and snack and sit outside at a cafe near the building so that we could enjoy the view. It was packed in the cafe, called Berlin Pavilion, and it seemed like a typical lunch spot for government workers and tourists alike. We didn’t stay for too long and then continued on towards the park that was nearby. Zane wanted to see some more greenspace so we decided to take some time walking around in there. As we walked on we stumbled upon the Soviet War Memorial in the Tiergarten which was, as the name suggests, a war memorial for Soviet soldiers during WWII. It was a large memorial with a huge bronze statue at the top of a soldier. For some reason while in that memorial I got the feeling that it would be so surreal to have a war on a massive scale like it was in WWII in the present day. Not that it would be unthinkable, because the Ukraine war makes it a closer reality, but just that the city we were walking around in could be completely devastated and unrecognizable if a war were to take place. All that we were doing, touring European cities would be impossible and forever changed. I felt lucky that my generation didn’t go through a cataclysmic world-altering event like prior generations had.
We continued walking through the park, The Tiergarten, and saw some statues that had the history of the park. It was at one point a park for the royalty to hunt and the park was heavily impacted by WWII. The park was different than the forest in Amsterdam, it was large like the one in Amsterdam, but it was more orderly, more structured. Everything seemed designed on purpose whereas the Amsterdam forest did seem to have some aspects of it that were left to just grow into something on its own. We didn’t stay too long because we wanted to get back to seeing the city on Siraj’s last day.
Our next stop was checkpoint Charlie which was about a 15/20 minute walk. We walked through more of Berlin which was downtown in essence. There were high-class shops, more of a business-oriented district, and hotels. We got closer to Checkpoint Charlie and it became even more touristy, with lots of fast food and a lot of people. The Checkpoint itself was not that impressive, just a small shack, a sign saying we were entering the American section, and a picture of an American soldier. There was another museum that had a 360 view of the area as it was during the Cold War, but we didn’t want to pay for that experience. I’m sure it would have provided some more information. There was another museum called Black Box Cold War which had more history about the wall, East Berlin, and the Cold War. It was a really informative museum and it was free, just something outside that we could walk through reading about how the wall changed over time, the people who died trying to escape, the extensive measures that the Soviets went to to keep their population contained and trapped. It was interesting to see how the wall grew over time, taking more space and using new technology to impose barriers against people leaving.
Not very far from the Checkpoint Charlie area was a section of the wall that was still intact and had a museum of sorts. We didn’t have it on the itinerary, but we had plenty of time left in the day so we decided to head there and see what the wall looked like. We walked along the wall and it was interesting, but ultimately just a wall, not the whole installation of the wall and its additional apparatus. What we stumbled upon was a really informative history lesson about Germany and the rise of the Nazis. It talked about how Hitler came to power, the propaganda used, how the prior government was acting, how people were opposing the Nazis, how Jews were trying to fight for their livelihoods, how Gypsies were persecuted, how homosexual life in Berlin flourished prior to the Nazi’s and ultimately destroyed, and so much more. It was one of the most informative pieces of media that I had experienced about the Nazi regime in Germany. I was particularly moved by the part about handicapped persons being murdered, there were babies that were taken out of assisted care and moved to concentration camps and ultimately killed. There was a letter from a father pleading to see his daughter who was handicapped and when he would be able to visit, but there would be no visitation for him. It was interesting to learn about the Nazi SS, that they were a non-state police force, they were a police force that answered directly to the Nazis. They were imposing their will in the streets as a gang essentially but became legitimate once the Nazis gained legislative seats and ultimately became the ruling party. There was a time when a Nazi SS would patrol side by side with a Berlin police officer. It was such a jarring idea to have a private, organized police force enforcing their own rules. I thought a lot about the US while walking through the exhibit, how the US may be moving in this same direction, not in the actions necessarily, but the rhetoric being the same. Conservative politicians pushing divisiveness on the population, insisting on certain populations being undesirable to the true American. Conservatives saying the same thing about disabled persons (trump making fun of a disabled person), saying LGBTQ people are unpure (conservatives burning LGBTQ books), saying that Mexicans/Latinos are tainting our nation (like the Nazis persecuting the gypsy population), trying to frame a certain white population as a true American. This rhetoric that conservatives have been pushing in recent years was a direct correlation to the history that the exhibit showed about Nazi propaganda and growth in power. It was these propaganda tactics that gave the Nazis seats in the legislature to change the laws that would allow Nazis to take action on their propaganda. What was really scary was how quick it all happened. After Hitler left prison I think it said it was only 6 months until he became chancellor and then there was no going back. Another aspect that was so surprising was the public works projects that are attributed to Hitler, like building the Autobahn and the lowering of unemployment. The exhibit showed that the prior government had already taken measures to reduce unemployment and was already working on building the Autobahn, so all of that being to Hitler is propaganda. It made me think of US politics where one president makes changes during their term, but the effects aren’t realized until they’re out of office and the success gets attributed to the next sitting president. We learned that Hitler made one attempt at obtaining supreme power, which got him thrown in jail, and then it was his second attempt that gave him total authority. If I could share all that I learned, I would, but it would still not be as informative as this exhibit was. I wish everyone in the world had the ability to go to Germany in person and learn about the history of the dangers that led to a Nazi Germany.
For dinner, we went to an authentic German restaurant called Schwarzwaldsruben. It was a really interesting place that seemed to be popular because there were a lot of tables already reserved. We ended up sitting on a stage of sorts, just a raised platform. Our table had a couch as some of the seating and one other chair, but nothing on the other side since the stage ended. A really unique type of restaurant. I got a drink and Zane got a flight of beers to taste, which might have been more than he was expecting. We ordered and I got the veal schnitzel with potatoes, Siraj got the German sausage on sauerkraut, and Zane got a vegetarian pastry of sorts. The schnitzel was really good, I didn’t notice a different taste from beef really. The meat was breaded and fried through so it’s quite possible that the flavor of the veal was masked. We finished up our meal and walked back to our hostel. Siraj was still a little hungry and wanted to get some fries so we got some from the place across our hostel.
After, we went to our hostel so Siraj could sleep some before waking up early tomorrow and Zane and I went for a drink in the hostel bar downstairs. The bar was a little busier than the night prior, but we kept to ourselves at the bar. We got a couple of drinks and then went back up to our room to sleep as well since we would be waking up early with Siraj. When we got to our hostel room we discovered a new roommate, Lilly, who was from the UK, Britain. We chatted with her for a little bit, but it was already fairly late so we were going to get to bed. She did share that she won a game show which allowed her to go on this trip, the game show was called The Chase. After chatting I took a shower and got into bed.
April 11th
We woke up early to see Siraj off and we went to a coffee and pastry place called Zeit Für Brot for a quick snack before Siraj left. Siraj got some food and a coffee, Zane got a coffee, and I got a croissant. We said our goodbyes and Siraj got on his tram to take a train back to Brussels for his flight out. Zane and I went back to the hostel to get ready for the day. Our plan was to see some museums since we hadn’t really at all during our trip so far.
Zane and I started off by walking to the Berlin Wall memorial which wasn’t very far from our hostel. It was different than the wall memorial we had seen yesterday because it was focused solely on the wall and the life of Berlin and Germany under communism. This wall memorial also had more of the layers to represent the physical barriers that were put in place to keep people trapped behind the wall. There was also more information about the people who had died while attempting to escape or the soldiers who had died on accident when they were preventing people from escaping. The barriers were quite elaborate and grew as the years went on to become a greater challenge. There was the wall, but then there were also the guard towers, patrol roads, electric fencing (to detect people and sound an alarm), sand to show where people had walked, and then another inner wall. The top of the wall also had a rounded covering which would make it difficult to put something over to assist with climbing over. There was a church that was demolished to make room for the wall, which the memorial showed an outline of. Zane and I felt that we had learned a good amount about the wall the day prior so we didn’t stay long and decided to head out for some food since our breakfast was pretty small.
We walked through Berlin to a breakfast place called Nomad Berlin. It had good reviews and since it was still fairly early in the morning we were able to get seated pretty quickly. The day was so nice that we sat outside in the sun. We were the only people at the restaurant at the time and they had just opened, so they took our order quickly. I got the pancakes with bacon, scrambled eggs, and a chives cream. It was delicious, the cream was very strong but all of the components together made for a delicious taste and texture. The eggs were still a little runny, ever so slightly, and created a creamy texture that paired with the fluffy pancaked and crispy bacon. The cream was the cherry on top that tied it all together. My dish was so good I can’t even remember what Zane got, it might have been the Shakshuka which he said was also really good. We finished up our food and got on our way walking through Berlin to digest our meal.
As we walked, we made our way through some parks, a market on the Neue Promenade, and eventually to an ice cream place called Frozen Toppi. Ice cream sounded good so I stopped in for some frozen yogurt, watermelon and vanilla. It was fine, hit the spot though. We continued on walking since we were trying to make our way to Museum Island where Berlin had the majority of their museums. We walked across the Friedrichbruke which was a large bridge that seemed to be converted to pedestrian and bike only. There was a large park in the center of the island called Lustgarten, the day was still fairly nice so we laid in the grass while our food continued to digest, we got some good people watching in too. There were a lot of tourists there taking photos and families with their kids running around.
Our first stop on Museum Island was the Berlin Dome which was really a cathedral. We went inside and entered into a massive nave. I was mainly drawn to the organ that sat above the pews, it was huge and beautiful. I still wish that I could hear a massive organ like that played live. There were also some prior members of the royal family buried. Their coffins were quite ornate and massive. We then made our way up to the top of the dome, along the way there were a lot of warnings that you couldn’t turn back once you were on the staircase and there were some 300 steps. It made me think of the movie En Bruge when the fat Americans are asking about getting to the top of the tower. I suspect that there were some fat Americans that tried to make their way up here too, but couldn’t make it and caused a big backup. Zane and I had no problem getting up to the top and when we did get there it was a wonderful sight to see. It was the highest that we could get to in Berlin so we were finally able to see the whole city. Surprisingly the city didn’t seem to be very tall, building-wise. There was the Berliner Fernsehturm which was a tall tower that had a rotating restaurant at the top, but that seemed to be the tallest building. I assumed that the capital city would have had taller and more density than what we did see. Thinking about it now though, DC isn’t that tall or dense, Paris has a height restriction so it’s not taller than the Eifel Tower, and Rome wasn’t that tall from what I could tell when I was there either. So, maybe Berlin is average in terms of density and height. We descended down and out of the cathedral and then made our way over to the next museum, Altes Museum.
The Altes Museum was focused on sculptures of Greek and Roman origin. There were a LOT of sculptures and paintings on vases. It was too much to really focus on each item so I moved fairly quickly through the gallery only stopping at the art that caught my eye. There were also some bizarre people walking through the museum too, they seemed to be quickly walking through taking pictures of each piece of art. At one point I saw them touching a sculpture too. There were a lot of guards around, but at that time of course they were talking with each other and were distracted. There were some depictions of city organization that was interesting to see from that time period. A lot of the sculptures focused on depictions of gods, heroes, or mythological creatures. This museum wasn’t my favorite, but it was interesting nonetheless. We finished up there and made our way over to the Altes Nationalgalerie.
The Altes Nationalgalerie was focused on paintings which was much more interesting to me. The prior painting galleries I had been to in Italy had been focused primarily on religious depictions and typically each gallery I visited had a couple of the same depictions, just by different artists. Luckily, this gallery had very little religious influence and it was more focused on everyday life. There were other types of paintings, but the main focus seemed to be on everyday life. It was so interesting to see what life was like in those various time periods, who knows if the imagery was accurate or embellished, but it was at least more realistic than the religious paintings of singular scenes. There were a few portraits that were interesting, one self-portrait by Arnold Bocklin with death playing the fiddle behind him, a much more interesting take on a portrait painting. There was a dedicated dog room with paintings of dogs, one piece caught my eye. Then there was the final room with some really incredible pieces. One, painting by Monet caught me by surprise, I hadn’t necessarily been looking at the artist’s names because it didn’t mean much to me since I don’t know many painters to begin with, but I would look at the names if I liked the painting. This painting stood out so much from the rest of the ones that we saw that day that I was surprised to see the museum had a Monet painting. There was also an Auguste Renoir painting that I liked even more than the Monet painting. I don’t know how to describe it, but when looking at some of the other paintings that had a similar style of visible brush strokes, the other paintings didn’t seem to have as much control over the brush. Renoir’s painting seemed so fine with how the brush strokes were placed like his brush was finer than the other artists. I felt lucky to have seen some of the art in the gallery and it made me remorseful that we didn’t get to see the Van Gough museum in Amsterdam because I’m sure I would have enjoyed that quite a bit. When we finished up at the Altes Nationalgalerie it was about closing time for all the museums so we headed out for dinner.
We walked towards our hostel and found an Italian place where we could get some pizza called Pucinella. There were a handful of people at tables and we decided to sit outside. The pizza was fine and the service was suitable, the waiter hardly checked on us and actually forgot that I was a patron when I asked to use the restroom when I walked inside. Once we finished we walked back to our hostel’s area and ultimately decided to get some donuts again at Donut Time. We were leaving early tomorrow morning so Zane thought it would be a good idea to get a donut to split in the morning since there probably wouldn’t be anything open prior to our train ride. The donuts that we got were still as good as the last time we were there. Definitely something that I would recommend if anyone goes to Berlin, great service and great food.
We didn’t want to call it a night just yet so we went back to the cool bar with couches that we went to with Siraj called Mein Haus Am See. We sat there for some time drinking and chatting, but we didn’t stay too long because we had to get up early for our train ride at 7AM. We finished up our couple of drinks and then went back to our hostel to shower and get into bed. Lilly was there too, she had been on a tour that day that wiped her out physically and emotionally so she called it an early night too.
April 12th
We woke up early for our train and packed up our things. Our train ride was at 7AM so we had to get over to the station pretty quickly. We each had a half of our donut and then got on the tram which was about a 15-minute ride to the station. Luckily there weren’t any delays and we were able to get there with plenty of time to spare.
The train was already on the track so we boarded and took our seats. The layout of the train was a little different with separate rooms, like the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter movies. The other trains we had been on had more of an open seating like an airplane. There was one other person in the room with us, but there was plenty of space so it wasn’t a problem. The train ride was 4 hours long so we got comfortable and left the station on time.
Prague
We arrived in Prague and walked to the tram line. It was about a 15-minute walk from the station to the tram line. It was an absolutely gorgeous day so it wasn’t a big deal and as we stepped out of the train station we instantly saw how beautiful the city was. It immediately reminded me of Italy. The architecture had a density and design that was similar to the Italian cities like Rome, Venice, and Sienna. Prague is a large city though so it was probably closer to Rome in terms of size. We got on the tram and had a quick ride to our hostel. We had gotten to Prague pretty early in the day so it before we could check in so we had to leave our bags in the checked bag room which luckily was free. Once our bags were down we wanted to get some lunch.
We found this place called Kavárna Šlágr which was really close to our hostel. We walked over and saw that it was a French-themed restaurant and also had a display for a lot of baked goods. Zane and I took a seat at a table in the front room and looked at the menu. It was in Czech so it was hard to read, but luckily my phone was able to help me translate. The waitress also had a hard time speaking English so we tried to work through what we wanted and hoped she understood what we wanted to order. I got some scrambled eggs and Zane got an omelette. The food was good and just what we needed. The atmosphere was great, the service was friendly and warm, the food was good, and then we got some delicious dessert to top it off and were ready to take a long nap. We paid and found out how inexpensive the meal was, the conversion rate was about 1 Dollar to 23 Koruna.
After we ate, we wanted to go to a park that was nearby and enjoy the beautiful weather. The park was called Grébovka (Havlíčkovy sady). We walked through the park and saw all sorts of people milling about in the sun too, eventually, we found our way over to the overlook point and saw a pretty good view of the city. It was interesting to be able to see a larger view of the city as now we could see that the architecture had a blend of historical buildings, Cold War buildings, and more modern buildings. As we would discover later, the view we had seen was more of the outskirts of the city and not the main city center area. We continued walking through the park and saw how lovely it was, the free growth of trees and grass which made it feel more natural than what we saw in Berlin. We found a spot to lay in a big open field lined with trees with some shade and still plenty of sun. There were lots of other people lying in the grass and walking through the park. There seemed to be a lot of people walking by speaking English and all sorts of other languages. Zane and I discovered that Prague is one of the top 5 cities visited in Europe so it was no surprise that there was a variation in the languages that we were hearing. Still, it was surprising to hear so much English around us. There was also this dog tied up to a tree near us that seemed odd. It was sitting by itself, not near anyone, but it would bark at people walking by and other dogs and it was muzzled. Other people left and it was still tied up, but lying down now. It kept feeling weirder and weirder. The dog was barking and no one was getting up to do something about it, the dog didn’t seem like it was trying to get closer to any particular person lying in the park, not really looking at anyone lying in the grass consistently, and it didn’t have any water or food. It made me wonder if someone left it there and abandoned it. There were other people around us that clearly had the same thought as some people stopped to watch and wonder; other English speakers around us were saying the same thing. Eventually, a woman got up from sitting in the grass with her friend and the friend’s dog, the woman walked over to the dog, untied it, and walked away with the dog. I was glad that the dog wasn’t abandoned, but that was such bizarre behavior. Now I could actually enjoy lying in the grass without having to think and worry about the dog. It was such a great atmosphere and the perfect temperature. We rested there for an hour or so and then it was time to check in to our hostel.
We walked back to the hostel, grabbed our bags, and checked into our room. Again, I was surprised at how inexpensive it was, about $40/50 cheaper per night than the other hostels we stayed at. This hostel had good reviews and was apparently part of some famous hostel listing in Europe, so hopefully, the price didn’t equate to worse quality or service. We went up to our room and saw that there were two other people in the room already with their stuff, they had taken the top bunks. It seemed that they were part of the same booking, but they chose separate bunk beds rather than the same bunk, so that was weird. Zane and I got settled in the bottom bunks and grabbed our dirty laundry so that we could start a load of wash in the machines that the hostel had. We stuffed all our clothes in one washing machine and got some change from the front desk. It was going to take an hour to wash so we had some time to walk around a bit. Zane wanted to get some snacks for the morning so we didn’t have to wait for breakfast places to open so we went to a little mini market that was a little bit up the hill. That was also something different that was instantly noticeable, this city was not flat. The other cities we had visited were very flat, no elevation at all. Anyways, we walked up and found the mini market, we got some morning snacks, the packaging was a little hard to read, but we figured it out well enough. I also saw a basket of strawberries that looked like the most delicious thing I had ever seen in my entire life. I had hardly been getting any fruits or vegetables since we were eating out all the time so the strawberries looked like just what I needed. We paid and then I began eating the strawberries right away. Zane and I found a park to sit in on our way back to the hostel. I sat there and ate the entire basket of strawberries, and I was right, it was the most delicious thing I ever ate, at least at that moment.
We sat there for a good while and people watched and then went back to our hostel to move the laundry to the dryer. When we got back to our room we found our two roommates were in the room so we got to meet them. They seemed quite young, two girls, and didn’t really speak much English. They kind of whispered to each other as we were in the room which we thought was weird since we only spoke English anyway. We asked them their names and then it seemed like they both said the same name for each other, Lena. I was confused and then they clarified that one was Lina and one was Lena, one with a short e sound and one with a long e sound. Bizarre interaction for sure. We dropped off the stuff we got from the mini market and then went down to move our laundry. I started the dryer and it said that it would take about 2 hours to complete! A shocking time frame, but we thought that we would have enough time to go and get some dinner.
We found this place called Café Sladkovský which was a quick walk from our hostel. The place was busy with patrons and it also seemed like they were setting up music for a live band. Luckily we got a seat even though the table showed reserved. The live music started and it was a sort of folk music, some local acoustic band. They sounded fine, nothing that I could understand, but they sounded decent. For dinner, I got a burger and Zane got a vegetarian dish. The burger was fine, didn’t think it would be a place that I would come to again if I visited again. We sat there for a little longer, but our clothes were due to stop drying soon so we paid and headed back to the hostel.
We got back and I checked on the clothes and they were still very damp, not sure how that could have happened, so I put them in the dryer for another cycle and this time it said that it would take 3 hours to complete! I talked to the front desk and they said that I should check it again in an hour and if it didn’t get any dryer at that point then they would take a look at it. We decided to go down to the bar for a drink or two while we waited. The bar downstairs was not that busy so we got a couple drinks and sat down. There was a guy and a girl talking nearby us and it was kinda cringey listening to him talk about knowing French and flirting with the girl. We tried to ignore the conversation and stick to ourselves. The hour came up and I went to check on the laundry and the time had changed to only another 15 minutes so it seemed that the dryer had started working again. We finished up our drinks, got our laundry, and took it up to our room to fold and put away in our bags. It was still too early for us to go to sleep so we headed out for a bar for some more drinks.
We walked around the block to see what bars might be interesting, but it seemed that a lot of the bars were packed with people standing outside with their drinks. The bars were also pretty loud so it wasn’t something that Zane wanted to go into. There was one bar that we stopped at that seemed cool, but it was packed when we got inside and they said they had no seating. Eventually, we ended up at a bar that was almost directly across from our hostel called Bad Flash Bar. It seemed a little divey, but there were plenty of people in there and we got some drinks and a table. We sat there for a couple hours and then we decided to head to bed. So, we walked back to our hostel. I took a shower and then got into bed.
April 13th
We woke up and got ready for the day. We decided to go down to the breakfast at the hostel. The food was pretty similar to the one in Amsterdam, basic and just a buffet. We didn’t stay there for too long, but we did plan our day to see what parts of the city we wanted to see.
The first stop for our day was going to be the Astronomical clock in Old Town. We took the tram into the center of the city which was about a 15-minute trip. We got off the tram and wandered through the winding streets to find our way to the clock. It kept reminding me of Italy, with the closely packed buildings and tan coloring, the sun shining, and the masses of people walking around. We found our way to the clock and discovered that it was in a main square with large buildings and restaurants on the perimeter. The clock was a major attraction for the area as a lot of people were looking up at it. We looked up some more information about the clock on Wikipedia since we didn’t have any guide or booklet; the clock was installed in 1410 and is the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and the oldest clock still in operation. It was quite a beautiful piece of engineering; unfortunately, we were there in the early part of the hour and we missed the tolling of the hour. We hoped that we would be able to make our way back later in the day to see the clock in action. Also in the square was a monument to the Hussite warriors who were forced into exile in relation to religious crusades. We walked around the square a little more but didn’t stay for too long as we wanted to make our way to the river next.
We walked through the streets some more to find the Vitava river and we eventually came upon the riverside. We were going to cross the river over the Charles Bridge, but the riverside was so beautiful and it actually gave us a much better perspective to see the bridge in its entirety. It really was a beautiful day too as we were able to see all of old Prague on the other side of the river and the boat tours on the water. We walked along the riverside towards the bridge and walked across. There were so many people touring through the city, it was a madhouse as we weaved through people walking across the bridge. Zane and I stopped along the way to look down the river and take some photos.
Once we were on the other side we noticed that there were a lot of people with some soft-serve type dessert. It was called Trdelnik and it was a cake or donut of sorts, fried bread that was hollow so that soft serve could be placed inside. I had to get some, soft serve was my soft spot after all. I got one that had chocolate and strawberries inside of the dough casing with vanilla soft serve on top. It was delicious, how could it have been bad? We walked along as I ate and saw a little more of the old side of Prague. When I finished up and we continued on to our next destination, the Waldstein Garden. The Waldstein Garden was a highly manicured garden, something more traditional than what the royal family would have on their grounds. The garden had a lot of depictions of Hercules in statues around the grounds. There was a large pond with koi fish swimming inside and in the center was a statue of Hercules defeating some beast. Also on the grounds were some peacocks, they were behind a fenced-off area, but we could just barely see them as the two males were trying to court a female. Also in the gardens was this peculiar wall, it was almost as if they were stalactites clumped together on the inner part of the garden walls. In the area there were also varying types of trees, it seemed that the garden had a very diverse arrangement of foliage. I can only assume that the royalty would have requested some variation or exotic fauna in their garden. There was a section in the garden that had some owls, one was out in the open, but it seemed that the others were hiding somewhere away from prying eyes. We walked to the center of the garden and enjoyed the gorgeous view of the grounds, the sun was shining down making it a lovely day and for a moment we felt like royalty. We walked out on the other side of the garden and it seemed that it was actually the parliament or senate house or something, some governmental building that the garden abuts.
We walked on further into the city and made our way up toward the castle. There were tons of people coming down from the stairs which seemed to be the way that we wanted to walk up anyway. It was quite a ways up the hill with lots of stairs and it really made me realize how out of shape I was, and how different Prague’s elevation was to the other cities that we visited. We made it up to the top and got through security to see a stunning view overlooking the city. At this point, we were in the castle, but we hardly noticed, it was just more buildings like we had seen before except that we had passed through a security gate. As we walked through the castle we came up to a museum called the Lobkowicz Palace, there was a sign outside that had a concert posting which was going to start in the next 30 minutes. We thought this was as good of a time as ever to hear some live classical music, so we bought some tickets and waited for the show to start. The concert hall was small and there were not that many people sitting inside, but the concert was an hour, so it was a good full show. The show had a piano, a flute, and a violin and all the players seemed quite good, although there were a few solo pieces from the piano player and I felt like it was rushed when he was playing. Just my preference. There were 14 pieces played in total and they were all good, a few stood out to Zane and me as our favorites; a piece called Pizzicato by Ch. W. Gluck, a piece called The Girl with the Flaxen Hair by Claude Debussy, and Fur Elise by Beethoven. It was a wonderful experience and we finished up the show and then got to go through the rest of the museum. There were a lot of paintings in the museum about the Hapsburgs and some historical artifacts such as fine dishware, weaponry, and letters between lovers. The most interesting part of the museum was the musical history, they had all sorts of historical artifacts from famous musicians and composers of the past. There were historical musical instruments such as violins, clarinets, and flutes, there were original manuscripts from composers like Beethoven, and even some ledgers for the cost of Beethoven conducting an orchestra. It was a really fascinating museum, not something that we had been able to view before.
We moved along through the castle and got to the cathedral, it was definitely beautiful, but there was a long line outside so we decided not to go in, we had also seen enough cathedrals to get our fill for the trip. We decided to head out of the castle and look for some food somewhere nearby. As we were walking out of the castle it was interesting to see armed guards with semi-automatic rifles stationed around the castle. Despite guns being common in the US it isn’t common to see semi-automatic rifles out in public spaces like that. But, it makes sense that there would be armed guards for a large public gathering space like that and protecting the heritage site. We walked further away from the castle and found a restaurant called Restaurance U Mlynare which seemed to have some traditional Czech dishes. It seemed a little touristy, but it still seemed like a good restaurant. We got seated and the waiter turned out to be a really nice guy, giving us good recommendations, and just overall very personable. There was a green drink at just about all the tables that we saw in the restaurant and he said that it was just the house beer that they brewed in the restaurant using some specific type of barley I think. It was also 13% alcohol which was shocking, the highest alcohol content beer we had seen on our trip. We both decided to get a glass and it was good, I’m not much of a beer drinker so I can’t say for certain if it would actually be a good beer. It didn’t taste like it was 13% that’s for sure though. I ended up ordering a beef goulash with bread dumplings and Zane got the fried cheese and a vegetarian dish. The goulash was good, and seemed very simple, basically a stew. The bread dumplings were good, a good substance to scrape up lots of the goulash broth. It definitely was a different type of bread I had tried before, they were sliced in bread slices, but the bread consistency was still very doughy and dense. It also didn’t have much flavor. We finished our meal, paid our tab, and then decided to head out.
Next, we headed up to the top of a hill in the historic part of Prague, which ended up being a big mistake after eating a big meal for lunch. I definitely felt heavier hiking up the hill. It wasn’t very high, but this was some of the most elevation we saw for two weeks so I was feeling the burn. The city started to fade away as we walked up further and it turned into a park. At the top of the hill was a tower where we could see the whole city, but the line was also really long. So we decided to lay, rest, and digest in the park on the grass. It was a nice day, there were lots of people out enjoying the day, and we could have napped there for hours. We laid there for about an hour and the sun was starting to go down a little more so we thought that it would be good to head back to our hostel. The overall trip back was going to be about 45 minutes with a walk and a tram ride. There was a gondola on the other side of the mountain, but Zane wanted to walk so we took a bit of a longer route. We made our way back down the hill, across the Charles Bridge, and down the waterfront to the tram line. The tram that we wanted had just left so we had to wait about 10 minutes for the next one to come, which gave us an opportunity to people watch. There were some skateboarders filming someone jumping off a small set of stairs, or at least attempting to. There were masses of people walking around, seeing sights. There was a woman dressed up as some wizard, almost looking like Voldemort. There were all sorts of things going on in this very lively city. We got on the tram and just like the city it was packed with people, but we made it on.
We got back to our hostel and laid there for a little while our phones charged and we reset. We thought our next plan would be for dinner and we wanted to venture out somewhere different from just the food directly around our hostel. We also wanted to see if we could watch the astronomical clock at the top of the hour so we decided to head back to Old Town. We got back on the tram and headed back. When we got there, we had just missed the astronomical clock again, so we looked for some food. We wandered around for some restaurant with seating outside, but for some reason, we couldn’t find anything. We made a couple rounds around the city blocks and we cut through some alley between buildings to find a restaurant called U Pavouka that had outdoor seating. It wasn’t until we sat down that we realized it was a medieval-themed restaurant, like Medieval Times, just not as elaborate. It was very touristy and the food didn’t seem all that appetizing. The service was also horrible, it took about 15 minutes for the one waiter in the entire outdoor section to get our drink order. We eventually got our drinks and it continued to get weird. The guy sitting behind us yelled his order to the waiter as he was walking by. The staff inside started to perform some medieval show, but it didn’t necessarily seem medieval because there were belly dancers? Kind of odd. Then the guy behind us piped up again as he stumbled sitting in his chair dropping his phone and expressing that he was just drunk. I wanted to get out of there before the show made its way outside and I didn’t want to get held up any further on ordering food. So, we paid our tab after flagging down our waiter eventually and got outta there.
I remembered seeing a pizza place as we walked around the blocks previously, so we headed back there to find somewhere a little more real. The pizza place was called Bertoldi and it had a cool atmosphere with a loft and seating up above on the second floor. We ordered some drinks and a pizza and drank while we waited for our food. Unfortunately, my drink came with a ridiculously long straw, a dried and hollow pasta noodle, which I knocked as I was moving a plate and the drink spilled all over my lap. I cleaned it up as well as I could, but there was only so much that I could do, definitely didn’t make the night any better. Luckily as we ate it dried enough that it wasn’t really noticeable, but it still felt damp to me so we finished up our food and then went back to the hostel. The pizza was fine overall, but I couldn’t really enjoy it as my pants were damp and covered in alcohol, I had other things on my mind besides the food. The tram ride back was about 15 minutes, I went up to the room and changed my pants and then we went down to the hostel bar to get some more drinks. It was dead down there since it was only about 10PM at that point, but there was some live music. Some guy was doing covers of some classic rock songs. He ended his set with a cover of Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen and he did a pretty good job actually. He put in a ton of effort to hit the big parts of the song, but it’s hard to compare to Queen. We had a couple drinks and then we went back up to our room to get ready for bed. I took a shower to get any remaining alcohol from my drink off me and then went to sleep.
April 14th
We woke up early for the day since we didn’t stay up very late the night prior. We didn’t want to do the hostel’s breakfast again so we decided to go to this place called FLAT Café which was a few blocks away from our hostel. The café was a British-themed restaurant that had union jacks, the queen, bulldogs, and all sorts of British accouterments around. I ended up getting the pancake which was really just one big pancake and it came with an apple syrup and apple slices. It was pretty good, but not all that filling. Zane got an omelette which he said was fine, it just didn’t have that much in it so it was kind of bland. The atmosphere was better than the food was there. There was also this peculiar wardrobe that if you opened the door of the wardrobe you could walk through a hallway to the bathroom. It reminded me of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, which could have been their inspiration since it was a British-themed restaurant. We finished up our mimosas and then decided to head back to our hostel to get our bags. Today we were going to the Prague Zoo.
The Zoo was a tram line, a metro ride, and a bus ride away from our hostel which took about 30-45 minutes in total to get there. It all lined up perfectly and we had a pass that allowed us on all the modes of transportation. Something interesting about Berlin and Prague was that there was no ticket scanning, you would just stamp your ticket on your first ride and then you would keep it in case you needed to present it to an officer. We didn’t encounter any officers checking tickets, but it seemed like it was on the honor system for the most part. It made for a smoother experience for travelers for sure. Anyways, we took all the modes of transportation that Prague offered and got to the Zoo easily. The Zoo wasn’t all that expensive, maybe $10 per person and it wasn’t that packed either so we got our tickets and were right inside.
The Zoo was huge, there was so much that we could see. We bought a map for about a penny’s worth and then went on our way. There were all sorts of animals that we saw, some of my favorites were the Hyenas, tigers, lions, big cats in general, the monkeys, the gorillas, the elephants, the hippos, and we got a small glimpse at a red panda which was adorable. Like the Oakland Zoo, there was a gondola that took us up to the elevated part of the Zoo to save us from walking up the hill. Something really interesting overall about the Zoo was that it felt that the exhibits were less cages and didn’t look like they were so artificial, of course, some looked completely out of place like the penguin exhibit, but for the most part the enclosures seemed as though they were built more naturally. It’s hard to explain. There isn’t much else to say about the Zoo so I will let pictures do the rest to explain what we got to see.
After walking around the Zoo for about 8 hours our feet were exhausted so we headed back to the hostel to take our shoes off and lay down. We took the bus, metro, and then tram back to our hostel and relaxed. While we relaxed we looked up places to eat for dinner and Zane found a vegetarian place that we could go to called Satsang. It wasn’t very far from our hostel so we walked over there after we rested up a little bit. The evening was very nice, with a good temperature and not really windy at all so we enjoyed sitting outside. Unfortunately, the service at the restaurant was quite poor, actually horrible. They took our drink and food order and after waiting for about 15 minutes they came back out again and asked us what our drink order was again. It took about another 15 minutes for our drinks to arrive and then we waited for our food. While we were waiting a family sat down at a table behind Zane and ordered their food. Then two women sat at a table behind me and ordered food. The family got their food after about 15 minutes and then the women behind me got their food maybe 10 minutes after they were seated. We were still waiting on our food so I stopped what seemed to be the manager and asked when we were going to get our food and he had no idea we had ordered. He said that the waitress told him we didn’t order food, which was weird, but he apologized and got to making our food as quickly as possible. I got pancakes because there wasn’t all that much on the vegetarian menu that interested me, and I’m completely fine with eating pancakes for three meals a day. We finally got our food after waiting for about an hour or so. Luckily we weren’t very hungry so we weren’t angry and we didn’t have dedicated plans after dinner so we weren’t in a rush. The manager gave us our drinks for free and then gave us a 10% discount on top of that which was honestly expected at that point. We paid and then left.
For the last stop of the night, we went to the bar that looked interesting the first night we were walking around the area, called Café Bar Pilotu. The atmosphere was fantastic. We sat at the bar and were welcomed by a bartender who gave us some water and a couple of menus to look over. This was the first place on our entire trip that gave us water immediately and for free. There were two menus, one was a seasonal special menu and one was their typical drink menu. The bar was a specialty craft cocktail bar and as we looked over the menu we could see why it was so popular. The seasonal menu had cocktails based on inspirational community members, and the drinks were styled to pair with their profession or personality. The bar also purchased something from the community member to give back to them for using their likeness as inspiration for the drinks. On the seasonal menu, there were about 15 drinks and on the regular drink menu there were about 12 or so cocktails and the regular menu had all sorts of other alcohol that a patron could choose from. Zane had typically gotten beer when we got drinks, but he felt compelled to get a cocktail here since it was such a unique experience. My first drink was from the seasonal menu called The Glassblower. The woman who inspired the drink was a glassblower and the drink was poured into a glass that she made specifically for the bar, there were about 15 glasses that I could see. The bartender said that each glass cost about $50, and I could see why, the glass was not uniform and had outcroppings to create some type of expanding bubble sort of imagery on the glass. The cocktail was very sweet and fruity, something light that could be enjoyed on a warm sunny day and could probably be enjoyed too easily. My second drink I decided to get from the regular menu and I got the Kino Pilotu which was named after the art house cinema that was directly next to the bar, the drink was a gin drink with elderflower syrup and all sorts of other ingredients. The drink was also great, maybe not as great as the Glass Maker, but that might only be because the first drink was sweeter and I do have a weakness for sugar. The drinks were some of the most expensive single items we had seen on a menu in Prague, but the cost in American Dollars was still cheaper than what a standard US cocktail would cost. Overall, the experience at that bar was one of the best bar experiences I have enjoyed ever! I’m sure if we got a chance to try the food it would have also been a great dinner, but we had just eaten so we didn’t get any food. It would be a fantastic treat to come back to this bar in the future again.
We finished up at the bar and headed back to our hostel. We had an early day tomorrow, Zane for his train ride back to Ghent and me for my flight to Brussels. While we were getting ready for bed someone opened the door, we thought it was our roommates, but it was someone from the front desk, which was weird. They popped in without knocking and then asked if the noise from outside was too loud. I shared that we have the window open so if it was too loud we could just close it. The front desk person said a woman on another floor was complaining. It seemed odd that they came into our room to see if the noise was an issue for the woman in a different room. The person left and then we went back to getting ready for bed. Again though, at this point we were both in bed and our heads down on the pillows, we heard someone come into our room again and go back out. It was very odd. I didn’t feel all that worried, but it was odd. I thought that if I was a solo traveler or if someone was a female solo traveler with a random person having a master key to my room it would be unnerving. I fell asleep and didn’t think much about it after that.
April 15th
We woke up early and stayed quiet while we packed up our things, it was pretty early in the morning and our roommates were still asleep. Zane had to grab his tram at about 7 so we packed up and went downstairs so he could get a snack and a coffee at the front desk. I walked Zane to the tram, hugged him goodbye, and off he went. His train ride back to Ghent was going to be about 11 hours or something like that with multiple connections.
After Zane was off I went to look for some food for my own breakfast and I walked down to this café down the street called Francouzska, one of the only open places that early in the morning it seemed. It was pretty nice inside and there were a few other people sitting around drinking coffee. I got a croissant and a sandwich that they toasted up for me, some turkey and cheese sandwich. I ate it while I walked back to my hostel and it was pretty good. I finished packing up my things and then I headed out for my own tram. My flight out of Prague was at 11:50 and the trip to the airport was going to be about an hour. So, in order to get there two hours in advance I had to leave pretty soon after Zane left.
I hopped on my tram, took the metro for a few stops, and then got on a bus that took me to the airport. Overall it was another seamless public transit experience and I was there. The interconnectedness of public transportation in Prague and really the rest of Europe is a clear difference between the United States. The frequency of routes, the closeness of stations, and the ease of embarkment make the experience seamless. The airport was pretty straightforward too, I got my boarding pass and checked my bag then got through security in maybe 20 minutes. There was a long winding line, but it moved quickly and got me through easily. Then I was just waiting for my plane to Brussels.
Brussels
April 15th
I got into Brussels and got my bag. I knew where to go this time to get my train ticket so I walked down to the station at the lower level and got a ticket to the main part of Brussels. This time I was connecting to the Brussels metro and I had to find a ticket machine to get a metro ticket. I looked around for a ticket machine but I could only find one that would allow me to add funds to an existing card, nothing about getting a single-use ticket or a new card. I walked around a little more and couldn’t find any machines that would give me a ticket so I had to go up to the counter and ask an attendant to give me a ticket. There was only one attendant so I had to wait a little while for help. I finally got a single one-way ticket. The metro cars were nice, but the experience of getting a ticket sort of soured my experience of the Brussels metro. The metro also didn’t have many English notices verbally or posted on the train so it was hard to understand where I was going. Luckily Google Maps was able to help me figure it out for the most part. The metro was packed like all the other metros I rode in Europe and it was very clean. Brussels is the seat of government for the European Union so it makes sense that it’s clean and safe. The ride was pretty quick to my stop at the Church of Saint Catherine. It was overcast and forecasted to rain so I made my way to my hotel and got checked in easily. The room was fine, but seemed a stretch to consider it a three-star hotel. It was pretty clear that they had to makeshift it to work for a modern hotel, but it was a private room with an on-suite bathroom and a big bed. I took a warm, long shower and laid on the bed for a while relaxing. I hadn’t spoken to my parents for a couple weeks and I missed them so I decided to give them a video call and chat.
Once I finished talking with my parents I decided that I might as well see some of Brussels while I’m here so I set back out to see some of the major sites. I first walked to the Church of Saint Catherine and then continued down a road toward the Brussels Stock Exchange. While I was standing in front of the building taking a picture a fight broke out between two large guys. They were yelling and boxing each other right in the middle of the square. Everyone had stopped and watched, some people filmed, it was pretty weird and seemed so petty. Who knows what they were fighting about, but clearly no one else cared. The fight started to come to a close and I continued to walk on towards this section of Brussels called Grand Place which was essentially just a large square with a lot of ornate historical buildings surrounding it. It was a very pretty sight. I didn’t stay too long, just long enough to grab some pictures. I thought I would get some more Belgian chocolate now that I am back in Belgium so I looked for a shop. I stopped in at a place called Gourmet Chocolaterie Belge, although I shouldn’t have because it was just some tourist trap of a store. I bought some chocolate that was overpriced and tasted as plain and basic as any other chocolate I would get in the US. I then went on walking further through the city and reached the Saint Michael and Saint Gudula Cathedral. By the time I got there it had started to rain a little so I went inside to escape the rain and see the inside of the cathedral. It was huge inside and just like every other church, it was beautiful. There was a large organ in this cathedral too, which is all I really cared about. I left not too shortly thereafter and made my way over to the Royal Palace of Brussels, I cut through the Park of Brussels which was the royal park for the palace. Unfortunately, as I was making my way towards the palace the rain really started to pick up. I tried to keep going but once it started hailing I decided that I should probably head back. I turned around, but the rain really came down in a downpour at that point. I found a tree that I could hide under and stayed pretty dry for the most part. The wind kept changing so I had to move around the tree to avoid the sideways rain. As I was standing there other people were continuing to walk through the park, I guess they just accepted their fate to get drenched. I stood under the tree for maybe 10 or 15 minutes and then I decided to make a run for it and get to the metro station. As I was running towards the station the rain started to let up, perfect timing. I got on the metro and took the line headed for my hotel.
On the metro ride, I decided to get off a stop early and find somewhere to get some food, there was a pizza place that I passed along on my short walking tour. I walked to the pizza place called Nona Pizza. It was still pretty early for a European dinner and the rain was still around so there weren’t too many people in the restaurant. I took a seat towards the back and ordered a pizza, just a Margherita, but it had some special type of mozzarella called Buffo, I think it was from a specific region in Italy and used buffalo milk. It was good, the cheese was definitely delicious, but I could hardly tell the difference between regular mozzarella and buffo mozzarella. I didn’t stay for all that long since I was eating by myself and headed back to my hotel. I laid around for a while on my phone before heading to bed, I had a flight in the morning so I wanted to go to bed somewhat early.
April 16th
I woke up at about 7:30 even though my phone’s alarm was set for 8. I happened to check my flight and saw that it was boarding at 10AM instead of 12PM. I quickly got dressed and packed my things, then I checked out and headed for the metro. I knew what to expect on the metro at this point so I got a ticket quickly and got on the train that would take me to a connection for the airport. When I got to the central Brussels station I had to try and figure out which train I was due for. It was not the easiest to figure out because most of the signage was in French. I could make out enough that I found my platform and the train I needed to board. Unfortunately, the train I was going to take to the airport was about 15 minutes delayed, not something I needed when I was already feeling the pressure to get to the airport early. The train eventually arrived and I got on, with all the other people who were waiting for the airport train. The day was smooth from there on out. I got my bag checked, went through security which was about another 20 minutes, and then found my gate. I got there with plenty of time to spare so I was finally able to relax. My first flight was just to Copenhagen so it was a small plane and a quick flight. Since I bought a Premium Economy ticket I got to sit in the second row which let me board in the second group and then deboard from the plane right away too.
The flight to Copenhagen was easy and quick, my layover time was only about an hour and a half so I hustled my way over to the next gate and got there with about 30 minutes before boarding. This flight was of course bigger since it was going all the way to SF. I got to board in the second group again and found my seat in Premium Economy. Luckily no one else was in the seat next to me again so I got to spread out my things and get comfortable in the row. The amenities were the same as the flight out, just as much legroom, the food was as good, and the comfort was pleasant. I didn’t get to sleep this time since it was essentially mid-day while I was flying.
I got into SF around 3:50 local time, got my bag, and hopped on BART back to the Powell station. BART was pretty empty for the most part, a stark difference compared to the public transportation of Europe. BART also wasn’t as clean as the other metros I rode. It made me feel melancholy that our public transportation system in SF is not at the same standard as that of Europe. SF is one of the better cities for public transportation too. Nevertheless, I made it back to my home and crashed on the bed.
Final Thoughts
There were some things that stood out to me while I was traveling around Europe. The first being water. Water is so hard to come by, there are no water fountains, no water bottle fill-up stations, not even in the airport. When you are at a restaurant you can’t get water for free, they don’t provide water immediately when you sit down. It varies per restaurant but they’re all about 2-4 Euro and they vary in size so you could pay 4 Euro for a small water that you get once, maybe an eight-ounce glass. I don’t know how they stay hydrated in Europe unless they’re getting all their water from alcoholic drinks like wine or beer!
Another thing that bothered me was the toilets, they were very weird in that they didn’t really flush all that well. They poured out like a waterfall from the top of the bowl and mixed with the contents below, not necessarily pushing out all the waste. American toilets have a jet of water at the bottom to push waste out quickly first and then fill the bowl with clean water, but that’s not how it works in Europe. There were multiple instances in the hostels that we were staying at where I would walk into a shared bathroom and there would be some remaining soiled toilet paper. Very gross.
Prior to visiting Europe, I gave up sweets for the year, but I decided that I would enjoy my vacation and enjoy the sweets of Europe, at the end of the trip I didn’t feel like the excuse of European delicacies was worth it. There were some good sweets that I tried, but in the end, it was still just sugar. If I was on vacation again and had the no sweets parameter at home I think I would have that persist on my vacation. There’s always an excuse to have sugar or to break a goal and I didn’t find anything worthy of breaking that in the end.
There were not many handicapped persons and never a wheelchair. We saw some people that had forearm crutches, but there were only a few. It would be really hard to be handicapped in Europe because there are so many tight spaces, limiting entrances, and limited sidewalks. Made me think how fortunate we are in the US to develop the places we live so that it can accommodate other people and their circumstances. The American Disabilities Act really makes a difference between Europe and the US, but also the US isn’t developing on top of centuries of building. Similarly, there are not nearly as many overweight people. So much of Europe has pedestrian or bicycle-focused transportation that I don’t think people can afford to be overweight. This is all in the major cities though, maybe there is a different perspective out in the suburbs or surrounding towns.
Some good things, first being the public transportation. It is so easy to get anywhere with public transportation. Tram, train, metro, bus, boat, you name it. They are all integrated, frequent, and cheap. In Berlin for example the 72-hour pass was about 12 Euro for as many rides as you wanted to take! Ghent had a tram line or two and a very robust bus service. It makes me think of what could be developed in Petaluma for bus service or dedicated tram lines down a main thoroughfare.
The fewer cars in general. Berlin had the most car infrastructure that we saw while we were traveling, but the majority of people still seemed to be walking, biking, or taking public transportation. The most noticeable difference is the scarcity of cars in the main city centers. Allowing people to congregate freely around businesses, restaurants, and public spaces made for a much more enjoyable experience. It was quieter too, there wasn’t a constant hum of cars driving by and no horns.
The ability to safely use bikes and dedicated bike infrastructure. Amsterdam of course had the greatest support for bikes, but all the other cities had clear markings and a lot of bike riders. Even Berlin that had the greatest use of cars still had plenty of bikers in bike lanes. Near our hostel in Berlin there were always bikers accumulating at the traffic signals, the only reason I didn’t notice bikers accumulating in the other cities was because there weren’t as many traffic lights. Amsterdam had people of all ages riding and they were weaving through the masses of people expertly. Families had wheelbarrows of sorts at the front of a parent’s bike so that kids could commute with their parents to their destination. Or they could put a dog, groceries, or anything else so do all that a car could. In Ghent Zane explained a Fietsstraat which was a bicycle-first roadway where if a car was behind a biker then the car would have to stay behind the bicycle. There were barriers throughout the fietsstraat that made it more challenging for a car to continue using the roadway, but the barriers didn’t limit a biker.
I had as much fun on this trip, but it was a different kind of fun because I was with my closest friends. I enjoyed their company more than the trip itself because I cherish the time that I can spend with the two of them, all of us together. I missed all of us living together. I hope we can all see each other again soon. Prague was my favorite city by far. It was inexpensive compared to the rest of Europe and had the same if not better amenities as the other cities. I would love to go back to visit Prague and explore more of the city, but how can I go back to the same place when there is so much to see!
Aaron's Travel's 